Reflections of “The Light Club of Batavia”

The June edition of ARTnews magazine contains a piece on artist Josiah McElheny and his obsession with the work of German novelist, poet, and artist, Paul Scheerbart. Through his many writings and drawings Scheerbart envisioned an electrified future, a world composed entirely of crystalline, colored glass—a vision which had a profound influence on many of his contemporaries in the worlds of art and architecture, including Walter Benjamin, Bruno Taut, and Walter Gropius.
As the ARTnews article notes, after discovering Scheerbart’s work for himself, McElheny’s work has been similarly influenced by the ideas of this nineteenth century visionary—not only inspiring McElheny’s recent book, The Light Club: On Paul Scheerbart’s “The Light Club of Batavia”, but also a whole series of McElheny’s other work, from film, to performances, to sculptures.
To find out more navigate to the article at the ARTnews magazine website .